Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday September 19, 2013 @08:00PM
from the take-a-ride dept.

Virtucon writes "Ride Sharing Services such as Uber, Lyft and Sidecar received a big boost today when the California Public Utilities Commission approved rules that would allow them to continue to operate as long as they followed a few rules. This makes California the first state to adopt such rules and is expected to preempt local governments who are trying to clamp down on these services and regulate them like local taxi companies."

I must be missing something about this concept. If you're getting paid (with a net profit) to drive people around, why is it called ride sharing? How is it not a taxi service?

A taxi takes you where you want to go. A ride share takes you where you want to go providing it isn't too far out of the way from where the driver was going anyway. Think of it more like paid hitch hiking. That's the idea as Lyft presented to New Tech Meetup a few months ago.

It gets less clear when drivers use the service to make trips they would not otherwise have done, just to collect the fare. As I understand it, "professionals" doing just that for trips to and from SFO.

I must be missing something about this concept. If you're getting paid (with a net profit) to drive people around, why is it called ride sharing? How is it not a taxi service?

...A ride share takes you where you want to go providing it isn't too far out of the way from where the driver was going anyway...

.

No. I've used Lyft on multiple occasions, and every single time it was exactly like a taxi--"Take me to location X". There was no waiting around for someone travelling a similar route or anything along those lines.

What I actually really like about it is the rating system. Lyft provides a "suggested donation" for the traveler. The traveler can pay as much as they want (with a minimum of $5, IIRC), but Lyft tracks the value as a % of the suggested donation (which is *always* less than the cost of a taxi). Lyft drivers, then, have the ability to look up passengers that average, say, minimum 80% of the suggested donation. So if you're continually paying very little, you're going to quickly find yourself out of a ride. And on the flip side, travelers get to rate the driver--how friendly were they, how clean was their car, etc. And living in Chicago, I can tell you that I have taken far more filthy taxi rides with complete asshole drivers (who refuse to take the route I tell them) than I care to count. So while I haven't used the other services, I have nothing but good things to say about Lyft.

And this, in a nutshell, is what separates the ride-sharing services from taxis.

What it really does, in my opinon, is provide a much-needed reset for regulations upon ride-for-hire services that were once monopolized by cabs. As with any longstanding sets of regulations, taxicab regulations have long been past due for the whole system to be stripped down and rewritten from the ground up.

So what you're saying is that they are using a loophole by relying on their drivers to lie about what they were doing. A lawyer might even argue that, of course, the driver was going in that direction because money was waiting for them when they arrive! How keen!

Pffft. Why not just deregulate taxi driving and be honest about it. I know Lyft drivers. They are *not* picking people up randomly. They treat it as a job and appreciate the income.

Pffft. Why not just deregulate taxi driving and be honest about it. I know Lyft drivers. They are *not* picking people up randomly. They treat it as a job and appreciate the income.

Because, silly. According to the article, companies receive a "big boost" when government begins to regulate their industry. Deregulation of taxi driving would obviously negate the, "big boost" they get from regulation. Considering how heavily regulated taxi drivers are, the boost must be gigantic.

A taxi takes you where you want to go. A ride share takes you where you want to go providing it isn't too far out of the way from where the driver was going anyway. Think of it more like paid hitch hiking. That's the idea as Lyft presented to New Tech Meetup a few months ago.

So in other words:

(1) a taxi takes you where you want to go for money within limits (i.e., no taxi is likely to take you from Maine to Tierra del Fuego, and you can't always rely on them picking up and discharging in certain neighborhoods).

(2) a ride share takes you where you want to go for money within limits.

Yet you evidently somehow see a difference between the two fundamental enough to justify classifying (and regulating or not) them differently [shakes head in bafflement and wonder]. What I see is some people attempting to work around onerous over-regulation of taxis and financial burdens on same which they must pass on to customers. I can't imagine why anyone would object to the opportunity they are attempting to provide to both drivers and riders, but the method seems foredoomed because of existing taxi regulations. I do understand that it is difficult to attack those regulations because they arise locally in thousands of separate jurisdictions. It's like a lot of manifestations of runaway government. I don't see how to effectively control it without what... overthrowing the entire system... in favor of what?

Oh, and a vanishingly small percentage of drivers demand money to give a lift to a hitchhiker. That one is just a pure red herring.

Legally the difference is that taxi cabs can be hailed on the street. No other type of private transportation (limos, airport shuttles, ridesharing, etc.) can be hired this way -- they require a separate, prior arrangement.

I see. Makes sense, in its way. Are the other services you mentioned (limos and shuttles) already regulated in some way? I would expect so, so it seems like they should just expand the current definitions to apply to for-profit "ride sharing." I guess the ad-hoc nature of these arrangements requires something special.

A separate prior agreement that you can make via a phone call while chatting with the driver.

If Taxi's want to compete, let them build a rating system like Lyft or Uber.Put a QR code on their doors people can find out about the surly bastard driving and the condition they keep the vehicle in.

There are apps for this in the taxi world, mytaxi is a common one. TaxiMagic is another.mytaxi-Driver skips the cab company and goes direct to the cabbie, and its the equivalent of a street hail.With some of these apps

Taxis also don't get to pick and choose their fares...if they stop to pick someone up, they have to take them wherever they're going. These sharing services allow drivers to screen based on destination, so people heading to bad neighborhoods could be SOL.

The difference is that a ride sharing program has a driver who is not licensed to drive taxis or limos, is not properly insured, and is not required to maintain their car. You're entirely correct that these ride sharing programs are nothing but an end-run around the regulations for taxis and limos. We need to regulate them for the exact same reasons we need to regulate taxis.

The real question is... why, if it is a taxi service, is it treated any differently? Taxis rip you off.. I've been ripped off by Taxi drivers that are highly regulated in NYC and then, less than 20 hours later treated excellently in a completely unregulated taxi in Africa.

I must be missing something about this concept. If you're getting paid (with a net profit) to drive people around, why is it called ride sharing? How is it not a taxi service?

They're probably trying to work around some regulations. In the UK it's pretty clear: if it's done for hire, it's one of two types of taxi. A "hackney carriage" is what most people think of as a taxi: it's one you can hail in the street. There's also a "private hire" taxi, where you have to have some sort of prior arrangement before being picked up; it covers a whole range of options (up to a maximum size of vehicle and excluding a few more highly regulated categories) such as limousines and dial-a-rides. I

It is a taxi service. They're calling it something else so it doesn't get strangled by the cartel-based rigid regulation of taxis.

Nope. They are using a different set of rules to run their business because of the cartel-based rigid regulation of taxis. This is made possible by the use of these little wireless pocket computers people carry in their pockets that allow everybody to get online no matter where they are anymore. Other vehicles such as towncars, limos, airport shuttles, and rideshares have been around for quite some time and are not taxis and operate under a different set of rules. These new services are operating under thos

It isn't a taxi service because taxi service is an over regulated cartel in most cities, and it is almost impossible to enter the market.

This is an example of good free market forces at work. We have an over paid, over regulated monopoly supported by by government regulation finally get some competition. Hopefully these new guys will be able to stay lean and mean.

So it's by weight. The Cadillac Escalade was intentionally redesigned to add 200 pounds to it to make it legally a "truck". And yes, it was to get around CAFE regulations, but it also reduces property taxes in most jurisdictions, since trucks are considered work vehicles. In addition, as a work vehicle, you can get a license plate as a commercial vehicle, which permits stopping/parking in loading zones.

The basic definition of a light truck--any truck or truck derivative with a gross vehicle weight rating of 8,500 pounds or less--allows plenty of room for family vehicles. Because light trucks is considered a separate category from passenger automobiles, vehicle manufacturers have been able to build and market SUVs and other large vehicles with a less stringent CAFE standard, currently 20.7 miles per gallon (mpg). Furthermore, most SUVs and pickups, and all vans, are currently permitted to emit 29% to 47% more carbon monoxide and 75% to 175% more nitrogen oxides than passenger cars.

The PT Cruiser was the Neon with a hearse body kit on it. The made the rear seats fold flat (and actually reduced cargo capacity to make that happen) so that they could get it certified as a "light truck" for the better CAFE rules. "light truck" saves about $2000 in CAFE penalties, per car. Sell 10,000 of them, and the government paid Chrysler $20,000,000 to call them "light trucks".

The rules are stupid, but that's what they were at the time. I haven't kept up since that stupidity, but I did hear that

Then you sir use your truck as a giant cat's toy, for simple amusement. Do you want to know what our truck (and all trucks) looked like where I grew up?

Our truck was covered in mud, or dust, or cowshit, or snow, or whatever, because we used the truck to do actual work. We didn't go seeking "challenging conditions", we lived in them. Whether hauling stuff to and from the field, or stacking it with firewood to heat our house all winter, or carrying animals to where they had to go, or carrying nurses into tow

A better comparison than you realize. By not calling it a taxi service, they get out from under the onerous regulation of taxis that is present in almost every major city. SUVs are classified as light trucks by federal regulation, meaning that they are regulated more lightly than station wagons, particularly their gas mileage.

I wish they still made station wagons, all they make are SUV's, minivans, and those stupid crossovers. My daughter has CP and can't climb into those elevated POSs, but I need room in the back for a wheelchair.

Hey, it's very important that my vehicle look more impressive by being taller, even though it raises the center of gravity and greatly increases the risk of rolling over.

You may never have driven a high vehicle but if you have you would immediately notice that being high gains you a better view (at least I do when I get in a high vehicle from my sedan). This is actually pretty nice when turning left at intersections, merging lanes etc. Being as most people drive these vehicles in urban environments and not in environments that would stress their centre of gravity I would posit that they've more concerned about the better view than "looking impressive" or worrying about th

So you're the jackass in front of me on the on ramp doing 20 so he won't roll over. Pull the fuck over and let the real cars pass, then you can use your "better view" to watch for a 3 mile gap in which you can to accelerate to a highway speed, or just pull into traffic doing 60 when you're doing 20, like you were going to do anyway.

It's a nice strawman you've constructed there but SUVs can go around on ramps at well above the posted limits. They also usually have big beefy engines (which is why they are usually as being inefficient) and can accelerate to merging speed in safe and reasonable time frames.

Are you the moronic 16 year old that thinks it is a good idea to accelerate from 60k to 140k as fast as possible in traffic in the right lane (or while veering across several lanes of traff

I've never driven in a high vehicle, but I once rode with a high driver...

But seriously, there are other reasons than status, height, etc. For one thing, SUVs are spacey and comfortable and spacious, and offer a lot of storage.

Also, while height offers advantages, it also has disadvantages. They also have fairly bad blind spots in certain directions, and make it even harder than normal to see some low objects (very small cars, bicyclists motorcyclists, etc).

The taxi services were enjoying the monopoly and have a share of the blame too. It is not as if they were trying to fight the medallion system. I personally cant wait for the medallion system to collapse, or prices to plummet.

The SFMTA reports that there are only twenty-nine taxi companies that legally operate in San Francisco. Those 29 taxi companies operate a total of 1,707 cabs. (One medallion allows one cab to be operated.)I can tell you from hard, long experience that this is far too few cabs for the city.

There are currently 1,430 people waiting to acquire a taxi medallion. http://www.sfmta.com/services/taxi-industry/medallions/waiting-list

It is said that one is often on the waiting list for ten years. In order to acquire a medallion, you have to meet a boatload of somewhat reasonable requirements, then be able to pony up $300k. From that $300k, the city takes $100k, and the remainder is given to the previous medallion holder.

As of this moment, the city does *not* create new taxi medallions. This is the very definition of "lucrative, performance insensitive monopoly".

In Anchorage, the only way to create new medallions is to have the current holders vote to create them. The city started issuing some, and they were sued for illegal seizure by diminishing the value of the existing ones without compensation. The courts ordered that the city must buy-back existing medallions at market prrices (About $100,000) before they could issue new ones. So no new taxis. Most are owned by out-of-state investors, and the original idea of owner-operator is the rare exception (and the

In San Francisco "taxi services" do not own medallions generally, individual drivers do. This is a distinction that matters a lot.

It means that a customer can call a taxi service and request a cab...and the service will put the call out on the air...and no cabs will care to pick it up (bad neighborhood, too out of the way, whatever). The service can't hold the drivers accountable (the drivers own the medallions) and the customer just gets to stand on the corner forever at times...completely unable to get a cab from any of the "5 pages" of taxi services (since they're all asking largely the same pool of medallion-carrying drivers). -The "services" get kick backs from the drivers for routing them calls, that's how they make money: The drivers are their customers, not the passengers.

And...Most drivers however, aren't even medallion holders. I know, I just said they were, but they're not. Drivers with medallions rent their medallions out to other drivers (thus ensuring the expensive medallion is making money 24/7 for the owner). Those sub-sub-contracted drivers are most of the actual drivers in the city.

The actual owner is required to "drive" some number of hours each week to maintain the medallion. But they're lazy...they own a medallion (read: free money), so why should they actually work? So they do their hours by sitting in the taxi waiting line at the airports, watching YouTube on their phones.

DOZENS of them...all in a line for ages at the airports...transporting no one...for hours at a time. Meanwhile the actual CITY of San Francisco suffers a severe lack of taxi service.

-----

And no one is accountable. Not the "taxi services" (they can't fire or refuse to "hire" a given cab). Not the medallion holders (who largely see their medallion as a free-ride and so long as the sub-contracted driver pays their rent who cares). And definitely not the consumers (who have no ability to select or rate drivers...and it wouldn't matter if they could because again, most drivers aren't medallion owners and the owners don't give a damn).

And it's been this completely fucked up for at least half a century, probably longer.

Don't hold your breath waiting for prices to plummet when taxis are deregulated. This has already been tried in the Netherlands, and the result was that prices went up, not down, and service got worse, not better, capitalist dogma notwithstanding.
The problem is that taxi drivers need to make a certain amount of money to pay their cost of living, and if the number of cabs goes up while the number of passengers doesn't, they end up spending more time waiting for fares, and less time actually driving. And they can't just hop off to a second job while they are waiting. So, they have to *increase* their rates in order to make up for their reduced number of trips, so taking a cab becomes more expensive, and they will tend to refuse short trips, trying to hold out for the more profitable longer ones, so taxi availability gets worse.

Only if they damn well show up when I call them, rather than taking nearby, more lucrative fares when they get flagged down on their way to me. If their dispatcher agrees on their behalf that they will show up, they need to damn well show up.

If they don't show I, I really don't give a flying what they paid for their medallion (and most Taxi drivers in SF are contract workers, with the medallion being owned by the taxi company; the driver is just an employee with no benefits who has to follow radio orders).

Personal XP here. SF cabs will skip you for the fare they just noticed on the street. Uber (a rideshare company) will be there waiting for you at least 2 minutes before you asked for them. No, I don't own stock in Uber -- but I wish I did. They just bought 2500 driverless cars from google (approved by DOT) for their fleet.

July 25, 2023 — As part of its second-quarter earnings announcement today, local transportation and delivery giant Uber announced its biggest bet on autonomous vehicles yet, saying it would purchase 2,500 driverless cars from Google....

Uber has committed to invest up to $375 million for a fleet of Google’s GX3200 vehicles, which are the company’s third generation of autonomous driving cars, but the first to be approved for commercial use in the U.S. The deal marks the largest single capital investment that Uber has made to date, and is also the first enterprise deal that Google has struck for its new line of driverless vehicles.

It’s been just five years since Google announced it would begin manufacturing its own driverless cars, and just two-and-a-half years since those vehicles have hit the streets.

If they don't show I, I really don't give a flying what they paid for their medallion (and most Taxi drivers in SF are contract workers, with the medallion being owned by the taxi company; the driver is just an employee with no benefits who has to follow radio orders).

That's just it, in SF the medallions are not owned by the taxi company. They're privately owned. Sure, most of the drivers are contracted...but they are contracted to the medallion owners (individually), not the taxi companies. Or more corr

Indeed. The worst situation was when I called in a pickup, and the Taxi driver outright lies to dispatch saying I wasn't there so they can avoid actually picking me up. I was at a large stadium in the middle of the night, standing at the entrance to the parking lot. There was one way into the parking lot. I was the only person there. He then told dispatch that I wasn't there. Cabbies deserve to be fired over this crap.

A very conservative friend seems to think I'm rather liberal when I think regulation is a good idea sometimes. Regulation *is* quite often a good idea when history has amply demonstrated that a business model cannot operate in a legitimate or non-abusive manner without it. Classic examples of this are banks and the the Wall Street financial market as well as the taxi business in places like San Francisco and New York, automobile manufacturing, trucking companies, and the labor markets. Great evils of various kinds have occurred when these things were not regulated. But sometimes overregulation creates problems. A great example is the airline industry. At one time, the airlines were highly regulated. Regardless of who you flew with, the fare would be the same for the same route and they were high. Airline travel in those days was quite expensive. Since airlines couldn't attract customers using fares, they differentiated themselves by offering great service (even in "cattle" class), better planes, etc. For example, when was the last time that any of you flew a Boeing 747 on a domestic flight that wasn't a leg of an international flight? In the 1970's, wide-bodied planes were common on the higher trafficked domestic flights. These days, airline service is awful but relatively inexpensive.

So I ask the question: Does ride-sharing really need to be regulated beyond a requirement that the vehicles and drivers have proper insurance? Is it anything like the wild west of unregulated taxi services in places like New York and San Francisco that created chaos?

Does ride-sharing really need to be regulated beyond a requirement that the vehicles and drivers have proper insurance?

Is it a taxi service — the taking of a person to a place they nominate in return for a fee — or not? If it is, there is a need for some regulation. An example of the kind of reasonable regulation is to require that nobody with a conviction for a sex crime should be able to be a taxi driver. Having to have a particular level of insurance (or better) is another reasonable regulation. It's all about ensuring that the services that are there are not actively hazardous for people to use.

"Regulators would require drivers to undergo criminal background checks, receive driver training, follow a zero-tolerance policy on drugs and alcohol and carry insurance policies with a minimum of $1 million in liability coverage."

That seems like some pretty heavy lifting that will probably dissuade lots of otherwise good-natured and willing drivers, no?

Seems like every job these days conducts a criminal background check. But what that actually means varies widely. Some jobs will of course bar anyone with any felony whatsoever, but the proposed regulations are somewhat more reasonable:
"Any felony criminal conviction within seven years prior to the date of the background check for driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, fraud, use of a motor vehicle to commit a felony, a violent crime or act of terror, a sexual offense, a crime involving property

Ride sharing is an important social innovation for moving to a low carbon emission society.The global warming benefit of ride sharing is when you raise the number of people riding in a conventional commuter automobile less CO2 is emitted per passenger mile. The financial aspect of ride sharing is substantial amounts of personal cash are released when cars are not driven.

I live in California and I have seen that free ride sharing services like 511.org mostly do not work. There are many reasons why these ride

Rideshare is a federally recognized term that encompasses carpool, vanpool, train, bus, and even bike/walk transportation. The creator of Lyft (John Zimmer) knows this very well as he created a fairly-well-adopted ride-matching website called "Zimride".

Zimride doesn't make too much money, though, so he sold it to Enterprise (the car rental company who also is in the carshare and vanpool markets) and created Lyft. Along with other similar decentralized taxi services, he is trying to brand their business models as "rideshare" to equate them with more sustainable practices and receive subsequent leniency in various markets and even public funding.

If you want to see what genuine real-time rideshare is, check out Carma (formerly "Avego"). This is a carpool-facilitating program that makes sure that the driver doesn't make a profit off the shared ride (per State Department mileage reimbursement rates).

No it's when the US does something the third (and second) world pioneered. Third world didn't pioneer breathing. (though you could argue they pioneered human breathing if you believe we first evolved there. Of course back then it would have been the most highly developed and thus a first world continent).

This ride-sharing is very common in the former soviet bloc too, though it's of the rather more basic wave-your-arm up and down at all the passing cars type technology rather than using phones.

No, but just because we can lampoon his analogy with hyperbole doesn't make him any less right. These services got popular not because hipsters care about the environment but because there's lots of people that need to get places and can't afford cars and regular taxis anymore. It points to a general decline in income and standard of living.

I don't know about Lyft; but Uber is actually more expensive than a taxi.

I use Uber instead of taxis because the service is vastly better. Uber cars actually show up when they're summoned and on they show up on the schedule promised in the app. They will actually come and pick you up when and where you want them, even if you're not at a hotel and going to SFO. They will take you out to the avenues without protest. The drivers are in general all-around more pleasant. And they don't stink of smoke, pee,

Two weeks ago I did an experiment - uber from the airport to my hotel cost $60 including the automatic tip. Taxi from the hotel to the airport was $50!not including tip. The Ã¼ber ride was great, the driver was nice, the car was clean, the trip was safe. On the taxi ride the Prius was falling apart, you could see the airbag peeking out from the hole in the dash, the signal lights did not work, the driver was shifty and allots killed a couple on a Harley by cutting them off on the freeway since

Point taken. So let me retcon my post a bit. I was thinking of comparing ridesharing to fund transfer via cellphones. Cellphone-based payment was first widely deployed in the Third World, probably because most people there don't have access to the real Internet.

Incidentally I don't think being Third World is necessarily bad. With a Third World mindset, you easily learn concepts like recycling and repurposing, how one nation's junk can be turned into another nation's transportation, information and even wea

Ridesharing is a well established mode of transport for the middleclass in Africa and Southeast Asia who can't afford to ride single passenger taxis but want something more comfortable than the local equivalent of a bus.

So the US has become a Third World nation. Ridesharing is a well established mode of transport for the middleclass in Africa and Southeast Asia who can't afford to ride single passenger taxis but want something more comfortable than the local equivalent of a bus.

I think you are confusing sharing rides with ridesharing.
Ridesharing is where you call the company in advance, and they come and pick you up, possibly picking up other people along the way and then drop you off and charge both of you the full fare amount, which is usually about the same as a cab ride. So essentially, if you and the person you are sharing with had gotten together and called a cab, it would be half as much to pay the cabbie as you would have paid the ridesharing service.

You're assuming that people in the Third World don't have cellphones they can use to send SMS message to the driver/owner of the vehicle for a pickup. While most (Third World) riders would happily and sometimes quite literally hop aboard the nearest passing vehicle for hire, some have made arrangements for scheduled pickups. Probably not the same hi-tech GPS/computer-based dispatch system described by Wikipedia, but if this were another patent story, consider this as prior art.

So, the adoption of a good idea makes a nation that is by definition a part of the first world into a third world one? Okay. Let's go with that.

Considering that ride sharing is still in the process of taking off, I'd have thought that the widespread adoption of ethnic foods in America would have been a much larger threat to our status as a first world nation, at least if we're relying on your logic, but hey, you know your logic better than I do.

Scan around the odd pics on the internet. You want a sign of the times? There are dozens of pictures of people that are driving on the street WITH NO TIRES AT ALL. They are driving on the metal rim. Deduce it. It's simple.

Yes it it simple. The number of people with cameras has increased exponentially. Now stupid stuff is more likely to be captured on film.

This might come as a surprise to you, but taxi drivers (competing against Lyft, Uber) and bed & breakfast owners (competing against Airbnb) are not very powerful groups. It's mostly very small businesses. They are tightly regulated because they are so many, so small.

As to powerful entrenched interests, do you know who's funding these startups? Silicon Valley venture capital, for a large part. To say they have political connections in California would be an understatement.

Yes, it's the evil global taxi cartel, backed up by small businesses from Edinburgh to Portland! They fight to keep the regulation in place, against poor megacorporations and venture capital firms who only want what's best for you!

There's probably a reason taxi services and bed & breakfasts are so tightly regulated, despite being mostly very small businesses - and it isn't lobbying. The "sharing economy" companies want to replace this with their own rating systems and mandatory arbitration contracts.